


This May Never Start

by sk8rpssockpup (MissIzzy)



Series: Back to Where We Lasted [1]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Moving Out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-03
Updated: 2011-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-29 14:18:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1006424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissIzzy/pseuds/sk8rpssockpup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows Claude isn't ready.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This May Never Start

**Author's Note:**

> Written the morning after the story first broke that Claude was moving out of Danny's.

Any minute now the boys will be up, and Danny can tell as Claude paces that he’s desperate to say something before they come in to say their final goodbyes. He knows him so well. This came as a shock to Cam, Carson, and Caelan, but their father had had the feeling it was going to happen since before the playoffs, that much as he cares for all four of them, Claude just isn’t ready to live this way with them permanently. Besides, he couldn’t have anyway; it had been so easy to forget, when Claude had been sharing Danny’s family, that he still wants his own eventually. Maybe it’s easier this way, before he’d been here years and years the kids started to forget that he hadn’t always been here.

So now he’s waiting, watching Claude calmly, his best placid father’s face on, the one he developed over the past decade, perfected when he and Sylvie had gone onto the rocks, and he does his best not to feel his own emotions, because now isn’t the time for them, though he’s not sure he won’t maybe need an hour or so to himself by the end of the day. When he looks at his sons like this, very often they spill whatever it was he wants them to spill, but he and Claude aren’t father and son.

He doesn’t know just what there are. In fact, he isn’t sure there are words in either the French or English language to describe what they are. But he’s pretty sure they aren’t that.

But it works anyway. And Claude sounds very young indeed as he asks, “Do they think I don’t love them, Danny?”

Danny’s first impulse is to say of course not, but it’s a legitimate fear. “Tell them you do,” he says instead. “If you tell them, I think they’ll believe you.”

“Do you...” Claude starts, then stops. Then plunges forward, “Don’t think I haven’t been happy this year. It’s been one of the best years of my life. It’s just that...”

“You don’t have to explain,” says Danny gently, crossing the short distance between them to wrap and arm around him.

“And it’s not as if I’m walking out of your lives. I’m not going to do that. I’ll make sure I see them, I can promise you that. Unless they...” He stops here again, but Danny has a pretty good idea of how that sentence would’ve ended: unless they traded him. After the events of this summer, that’s all on their minds. Looking at the team as one who might very well find himself its captain(Pronger ‘s more likely but as long as the possibility is there he has to be prepared for the responsibility), Danny has to admit he no longer has any idea where they’re headed, and when that happens noone’s safe; it’s not even impossible they’ll go so far off course Holmgren will give up and blow the team up completely. He supposes if that happened where Claude would have been living wouldn’t matter too much.

“In fact,” Claude lurches on, “I don’t think...” When he stops this time, he turns his head to look Danny in the eye, and Danny’s shocked to see how bright his eyes had grown, as if he’s fighting back tears. He’s suddenly aware that Claude’s starting to shake.

“I don’t think I’ve slept in this house for the last time,” he says, and Danny’s dead certain that’s not what he originally intended to say. Besides, he would’ve guessed as much, since Claude had crashed in the guest room a few times before moving in.

Danny wants to make some remark about snores or something, but he knows already it’ll fall flat. He’s suddenly anxious about whether this is really what Claude wants. It was making sense before this moment, and no doubt it’s what he thinks he wants, but now he suddenly can’t be sure of anything.

Until the next moment went Claude shakes his head, lets out an almost pained noise, then seizes Danny’s head in his hands and kisses him hard.

Danny has, for a very few fleeting moments over the past year, briefly felt the impulse to kiss Claude, but he’s always pushed the thought away before he think about what it might be like, and it’s never been a very strong impulse, or at least he was convincing himself of that. Now the taste of Claude’s tongue, the heat of his hands and mouth, the warmth of his body as he presses himself forward and crushes Danny into his embrace, it all floods Danny with a feeling that takes him entirely off guard, a hunger he didn’t even know he had roaring to the surface, and some voice in the back of his mind is shouting they couldn’t do this here right now because the boys will walk in on them but he can’t stop, he just kisses back frantically, tightens his arms around Claude and tells himself he won’t let go, not ever...

He holds on even when they came up for air, and as he does, he hears himself pleading, “Please stay, Claude. Please, I love you.” It’s all crystal clear in his head now, the only question he has for himself now is how did it take him so long to realize it.

But Claude shoves him away, his eyes wilder and more agonized than ever. “No,” he says. “No, you’re just saying that so I’ll stay because of the kids; you’d do anything for them, I know you would, that’s part of why I...” When he stops this time, he very nearly clamps his hand over his mouth to keep the rest of that sentence from coming out; Danny sees it jerk.

He laughs bitterly. “Claude, if I had been that dedicated, I never would’ve gotten divorced.” And that brings the worst of his pain to the surface, that feeling of failing his children again, and they adjusted fine once but how many times can he ask that of them?

Especially when he’s pretty sure he’s just made it worse, because he knows immediately Claude isn’t ready for this either.

So the smartest thing now would be to agree with Claude, watch him pretend to buy it, and hope he really would eventually. Maybe he even would immediately; if he was running away, he’d be glad for any ability to justify it. 

But Danny could never have gotten together the words for that in the minute that passed between Claude pulling away and the tentative opening of the door with Cam’s voice behind it: “Papa? Claude?”

After that Claude doesn’t even look at Danny, focusing his attention completely on Cam until the other two follow him in, one shortly after the other. Danny standings there with his calm father’s face put back on, and listens to him tell each of them individually he loves them, and they look up at him smiling through their sadness; no worry about disbelief there. Briefly Danny wonders how that would hold up if his own foolishness causes Claude to start avoiding coming here.

But no, he tells himself, it won’t. Claude’s not looking at him right now, but he’ll fix that eventually, one way or another. If he has to make the younger man more comfortable by convincing him he doesn’t love him after all, he’ll do it. Whatever it takes to keep them on good terms, no matter how much it hurts, if only because that’s something he is willing to do for the sake of his kids. Unless, again, one of them renders it all irrelevant by getting traded.

Until then, with no certainty they’ll even stay in the same city long enough for it to play out, he’s going to have to wait. Wait until Claude is ready. Or wait until he turns away from the possibility completely by finding a permanent woman. Either way, even with the knowledge of his own feelings only minutes old, he knows it’s going to be a long wait.


End file.
